Soft Shoulder
by ellenshipley
Summary: Kyle may have found the girl of his dreams. Early in the 1st season. I don't own the characters; I just borrowed them.
1. Chapter 1

Kyle Valenti opened his engine up on the highway outside of Roswell and severely bent the laws of physics. What was the point of being the sheriff's son if he couldn't test any boundaries? He suspected the deputies regularly gave him a pass—just as he knew his father would not. It made the game more interesting.

He liked to feel the dry, desert air whipping past his head. Its scream drowned out all thought of school, the team, Liz Parker—

He gunned the engine higher and the night fairly shrieked. His lips spread in a feral grin and his hands curled tighter on the wheel.

The last shades of purple were shifting into black and the sky was alive with stars. Alive, now that was an apt word, considering this was Roswell, New Mexico, the armpit of the universe. Aliens seemed to flock here like gnats, to hear the tourist line, ever since the '47 crash.

It was a hard rep to live down on the Varsity circuit.

It did not help that his dad believed every word of it, to Kyle's mortification.

Why couldn't his dad be an ordinary dad—or even an ordinary sheriff? Why did he have to go around chasing little green men—and Max Evans? What _did_ he see in that dweeb anyway?

For that matter, what did Liz see in him? Kyle stomped the pedal to the floor and watched the scenery streak by to stroboscopic flashes in his high beams.

No sense torturing himself. Plenty of other fish in the sea. Or _Liz_ards in the desert, his hind brain put in for his benefit. Max and Liz deserved each other. He'd never seen a sappier pair of love puppies. It made him want to puke.

Far toward the horizon a set of headlights approached and Kyle reluctantly dimmed his brights. He hated sharing his road, even for short interludes. He liked to think this stretch of night road at least was all his. Not much traffic came this way even in the daylight. Just another forgotten blue highway shunted aside by the interstate.

The rickety pick-up whipped past in an indistinct greenish blur and he hit the high beams, safely cocooned again in his light bubble. Like a space ship.

The night sped by, taking him light-years from Roswell and home, his only companion a shooting star.

* * *

"Did you see that?" Isabel leaned forward from the back seat of the jeep to shout into Max's ear. She pointed at the trail still faintly glowing against the night sky.

"Yeah," said Max, and Michael nodded agreement from the passenger seat.

"Over there!" Michael said, directing Max toward a slant-wise outcropping of flat rocks in the distance. Not far off their original course for tonight.

"What do you think it was?" Isabel asked her brother. "A signal from Nasedo?"

Max schooled his face before he answered. No point raising anybody's hopes about the mysterious and absent fourth alien. If he even existed.

"Probably just a shooting star. Another meteor, Isabel." The desert was littered with them. Space junk. They'd collected dozens of curious if useless pieces in the time they'd been coming out here to look for evidence of The Ship.

They thought of it in capital letters. The Ship—their ship—the one that had brought them to earth all those years ago, only to crash, marooning them. Ever since they broke out of their hibernation pods and found their way into human society as wayward waifs, they had been trying to find some explanation for their existence. They had never been able to find the pod chamber again, if they had ever known where it was at all. Their memories began with only vague snatches of that night.

Max and Isabel had been lucky. A kindly childless couple, the Evans', had found them wandering in the desert and taken them into their home and their hearts. Michael had hung back, and his introduction into the human community had not run as smoothly—then or since. But however the outer world classified them, to each other they were family. And as far as they knew for sure, the only ones of their kind on the planet.

"It might be a ship," Michael said, quick to jump to conclusions as usual.

"It's just another rock, Michael," Max said, picking out a track that would take them closest to the likely land fall.

Michael gave him a sour expression. "You say that like you don't want it to be a ship."

"He doesn't want to be disappointed," Isabel spoke for her brother. "He's just as anxious as we are."

"It's just a rock, Isabel," Max replied patiently. He would not get his hopes up.

Michael snorted. "Your mind has been off task ever since you saved Liz's life at the _Crashdown_ _Cafe_," he said. "Admit it, Maxwell. You'd like to stay here in Roswell and forget all about going home."

"This_ is_ home, Michael," Max replied, refusing to rise to the tired old bait.

"Cut it out, you two," Isabel said. But even Isabel could see that her brother was seriously distracted by Liz Parker. He had always had a thing for her, but it wasn't a problem until the day he exposed their secret by healing her fatal gunshot wound. From that moment, Max had been pulled in two directions, and even Isabel didn't know which would win out in a showdown. She wasn't anxious to put it to a test.

Their mission for the night altered by this new development, Roswell's only resident aliens made for the newest crash site with all due speed.

* * *

The automatic controls of the insertion capsule malfunctioned somewhere over Albuquerque and Silphi was forced to pilot the pod in on her own. Her piloting skills were a little rusty, but after all it was like riding a glide-bike. Once you learned how, you never really forgot. She managed to miss the town outright, and her only mishap was a bump on the noggin, for which she was developing a whopping headache.

So much for a stress-free field assignment. She was going to spend half her time just getting to the alternate pick-up coordinates, and the other half wishing it was already over.

And to top it off, she had to land at Roswell! She'd never live that one down. Of all the xeno-studies green horn stunts to pull, that had to be the worst. No one came to Roswell. You were supposed to give it a wide berth.

Well, it couldn't be helped now. Here she was and here she'd stay, if she didn't get a move on pretty quickly. The place would be overrun with tourists and ufologists in no time.

Silphi shouldered her field kit, pocketed the emergency recall signal disc and climbed out of the capsule. Once her heat signature could no longer be detected, the capsule self-destruct program took care of the physical evidence. Her life pod was reduced to its constituent mineral components, quite resembling a meteorite slag.

Not that it would fool a crash reconstruction expert for a second, but luckily this planet didn't have any as yet. Earth was classified for xeno-cultural and anthropological studies only. First Contact was strictly proscribed. Earth might not be ready for decades yet, the way it was going.

Silphi had no inclination for that branch of her field. She was not one to push herself forward into the limelight. Let the publicity hungry have their fun. She was content to observe and collect obscure cultural data on pre-contact planets.

Of course there were always the occasional unforeseen circumstances, such as now. That's why contingency plans were invented.

Silphi dabbed at the cut on her forehead with a medipad and downed a couple pain killers. In shorts, sandals and camisole, she was sadly underdressed for a trek through the desert. What didn't freeze in the rapidly cooling night would be fried by midday. Just another fun-filled field trip to the back of beyond.

The things she did to advance her academic studies...

* * *

Kyle came to the end of the road— or at least as much of it as he was willing to traverse tonight. The rocky outcropping he'd been aiming for loomed just ahead on the right. There was someone there ahead of him.

Max Evans. Kyle started a slow burn before he recognized the girl with him as his sister, Isabel, and not Liz. So that third figure skulking around the rocks must be that Garin kid. It was unnatural the way those three palled around all the time. Maybe he should clue Liz into the possibilities. But then the image that arose in his mind of the four of them almost made him miss the turnoff.

Kyle wheeled to a halt in a spray of rocks that pinged off the side of Evans' jeep. Some of them must have hit Evans in the ankles, but he didn't flinch, damn his cool demeanor.

Isabel scowled at him. "I'd have those brakes looked at, Kyle," she said sweetly in a voice that made him shiver.

"What are you doing out here?" he demanded in imitation of his father's best interrogation tone. It usually worked to get him a seat at the lunch table or a better parking spot.

But Evans was either immune or too used to being accosted by the real McCoy, as his father's current favorite teen target. He just continued to stare at Kyle in that unnerving way of his, just inviting a smack in the kisser.

"It's still a free country, Kyle," he answered placidly.

Kyle got out of his car and advanced on the guy who'd stolen his girl.

"Ah, we're rock hunting," said Isabel, coming around the jeep to stand beside her brother. "We thought we saw a meteorite just now. It came to earth somewhere nearby."

Kyle looked around in spite of himself. "Oh yeah?" He'd seen something like that earlier. "I didn't know you were so interested in space stuff." Liz liked space stuff, he remembered. Maybe he shouldn't have laughed at her for it. They could have been out here—alone—looking for space rocks...

Garin was kicking at something, digging at it with his boot and they wandered over for a better look. Nothing but a slaggy lump of metallic rock.

This was boring, even by Evans' standard. What did he have that Kyle didn't have? Besides Liz, of course.

"I'm outta here," he said, losing interest in a face off with his nemesis. Let him get the guy in a head lock on the practice mat, though, and things would be different. He couldn't hide behind his sister then.

"Play with your rocks if you want to," he called in a parting shot, getting back into his car. He pulled out of the turn-around in a scree of gravel.

It felt very satisfying.


	2. Chapter 2

They watched Kyle drive away in silence.

"What was that about?" Michael asked, scowling.

"Do you think he followed us?" Isabel asked, brushing blonde wisps out of her face.

"I don't think so," said Max. "He seemed surprised to see us when he drove up."

"All the same," Isabel voiced their shared concern. "He does seem to have it in for you—since Liz."

"Not to mention he's the sheriff's son," Michael added, kicking at the meteorite absently. "Speaking of Valentis who have it in for you."

"Valenti doesn't know a thing," Max said simply. "He's only fishing."

"Yeah," Michael said. "And you're the prize catch. Careful you don't get reeled in, Max."

They watched until Kyle's taillights faded into the distance, back toward Roswell and what passed for home.

* * *

Silphi had plenty of time to decide about the red convertible heading her way. She could see it coming from a small rise in the landscape beside the road leading back from the crash site, and checked out the driver through her distance glass. There might not be another for some time, and the longer she waited, the more likely she was to run into a ufo nut, suspicious of hitchhikers.

This one looked harmless enough—young, male, alone. Best shot she might have all night to catch a ride into town. The sooner she got into Roswell, and back out the other side, the better. Hide in plain sight, that was her plan.

As the car came on, Silphi stepped to the shoulder of the road and struck a pose. It couldn't miss, dressed as she was, and the car slowed right on cue. Silphi smiled to herself. Human nature was so predictable.

He pulled off the road in a skidding stop, raising a cloud of dust at her feet. Silphi dipped her raven haired head, peering at him from beneath long, dark lashes.

"Need a ride?" he asked unnecessarily, grinning like an idiot.

She had her hand on the door handle and was sliding into the seat beside him as she spoke. "I thought I'd be out here all night," she said, offering no explanation as to why this might be.

"What jerk dumped you out here?" Best to let him devise his own explanation. It would have the ring of truth to his own ears.

"My name's Sylvia," she smiled, moving as close as she dared without seeming too obvious. Her carefully designed pheromones would do the rest.

Field researchers on pre-contact planets carried a whole bagful of useful tricks and tools, along with their extensive training in passing as indigenous species.

Earth, sporting human-based beings like herself, was easy for Silphi to mimic. Others had not been so fortunate. There was the infamous tragedy from half a century ago that put Roswell on the restricted map. Refugees from a planetary conflict had escaped to Earth, only to crash-land and be taken captive. It was a paranoid time in Earth's history, coming out of its own planetary conflict, and the survivors did not fair well with the authorities.

First Contacts were so touchy. And whenever possible, they were best accomplished by same-based life forms to minimize the cultural shock. The poor grey-bodies never had a chance with xenophobic humans in full fight-or-flight mode.

It was rumored there might be survivors still, but Silphi discounted that personally as a cautionary tale to scare rookies. If there were survivors, why hadn't they contacted their own people to affect a rescue by now? No one could go that far underground.

"Name's Kyle," the boy said, unconsciously preening. He pulled the car off the shoulder and sped away, eyes glancing now and then on the road.

Silphi thought fleetingly about the seat belt, but Kyle wasn't using his.

"You cold?" he asked, his right arm snaking out and pulling her closer. "Dang, you are cold," he said, surprised at her chill shiver. "There's a jacket in the back."

Silphi reached back and pulled out a school jacket and gratefully slipped it on. She snuggled closer for more body warmth, and to keep the boy quiescent. She altered her body chemistry slightly to bring out his protective instincts, and he gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze.

"I'm captain of the wrestling team," he said, and she made an appropriate noise.

It might be best to keep him talking about himself, she decided. The field agent in her took over.

"So, what's it like living in Roswell?" she asked, smiling sweetly.

* * *

"Michael," Isabel called. "It's just a rock. Leave it and let's go. I'm getting cold."

Michael squatted over the meteor slag like a worried mother hen, prodding it this way and that. "It doesn't_ feel_ right," he said. He frowned down at it. Michael hated puzzles.

"'It doesn't feel right.'" Isabel turned to her brother and sighed. "You talk to him."

Max shrugged his shoulders. "You know he gets senses from physical objects."

"So what's to get from a meteorite? 'My life as a comet?'" She hugged the arms of her sweater.

"It's all jumbled," Michael said. "Like six objects melted into one. No clear image, but a lot of overlap." He got up finally, pocketing the metallic nugget. It was surprisingly heavy for its size.

"Let's go," he said, swinging into the jeep. "Before the ufo nuts descend on this place."

"What have I been saying?" Isabel asked the night in general.

Max put the jeep in gear and they bumped back onto the road to Roswell.

* * *

Kyle liked the way her hair smelled. Like flowers and Christmas cookies. Or maybe it just made him think of that stuff. But whatever it was, it was nice. He leaned a little closer to the top of her head resting on his shoulder. That felt nice too.

Liz never wanted to lean on his shoulder while he drove. She said it made her nervous. A lot of things made Liz nervous, he was just beginning to realize.

He could drive all night like this, but they were approaching the fork that joined the blue highway back up to the main road. He started to make the curve when his wheels hit the soft shoulder and he lost traction for just a second.

But at his speed, that was all it took. The car flew toward the ravine at an impossible angle. It hit on the front corner and began to pitch over...

Then everything went black and he couldn't move. He couldn't even scream—


	3. Chapter 3

Silphi felt the front wheels leave the road and braced herself automatically. Still it always came as a shock when her personal force shield triggered. She knew to relax and not fight the damping forces. No one had actually ever blacked out from lack of oxygen. It only seemed like it.

One thing she did try to do was hold onto Kyle as long as possible. If she could keep him within the protective field of her crash shield, he would be protected. But she had no illusions that two loose objects in a tumbling open car would stay put.

It lasted only seconds, but she felt Kyle torn away toward the end of it. When the shield turned off, she could see they had both been thrown free of the mangled car. Kyle was only a few yards away from where she lay. His head was at an odd angle and he wasn't moving.

Silphi scrambled to his side and checked his pulse. At least he had one. His head was wet and blood smeared a rock where it had struck. She checked him for other injuries, but none were obvious.

The head then. Assume a concussion at the very least.

"Kyle! Kyle, can you hear me?" she called, pulling items out of her med kit. She got a low moan in response.

"Stay with me here, Kyle," she said, dealing with the bleeding first. But she had no way of knowing how bad the internal damage was. She had to get him help.

The car was a total loss. She ran to the carcass and searched for anything useful in the wreckage, like a cell phone. Nothing.

Damn. That meant she'd have to use her own resources. The danger of discovery was slight, but she had to chance it. She ran back to Kyle and took off the school jacket he'd leant her. Folding it carefully she propped his head against it and settled down beside him with her field pack.

She fished out her signal disc and made herself as comfortable as she could. It might take awhile.

She considered and rejected police and military communication channels. She didn't have a death wish. Commercial broadcast…cellular…emergency—? She was just about to try one of those when another channel occurred to her. Less certain perhaps, but more secure.

She closed her eyes and pitched her mind to the frequency of human telepathic thought. One in twenty humans had the potential. She detected a signal right away—and it was close by!

Silphi boosted her signal and called to the mind she had tickled with her first thoughts. Even as she heard the car roar by on the road overhead she felt the mind within it start in surprise.

* * *

"Stop the car!" Isabel screamed. "Stop, Max!"

Max screeched to a halt on the shoulder and whipped around to stare at his sister in surprise.

Isabel was staring into space with a gape-mouth expression.

"Isabel?" Max said, concerned for he knew not what.

She caught her breath and came back to them again. "It's Kyle— he's been in an accident! Oh, turn back, hurry!"

"How do you know?" Michael demanded, even as Max turned the jeep around.

"Where?" he asked, scanning both sides of the road as he drove.

"There! Down there," she said, pointing off into the darkness.

Yes, they could see where something had left the road. Max killed the engine and they poured out of the jeep, sliding down the embankment in a tumble of rocks and debris.

They found the car first. A sick feeling came over Max as he tried to make sense of the pieces. No one could have survived that.

Isabel ran past the car and farther along the rocky ravine. "Over here!" she called.

Max and Michael tore off after her voice.

Kyle was unconscious on the ground. There was a lot of blood, but it had stopped, and they could hear him moaning softly. Isabel was kneeling beside him.

She wasn't alone. There was a dark haired girl beside her, looking scared and grateful, but otherwise undamaged.

"Oh, thank goodness you stopped," she said. "I _prayed_ someone would see us."

Isabel glanced at Max over her shoulder, but she didn't correct the girl. Let her think they'd seen the car. Better than the truth. No one could know about Isabel's flashes of insight, or telepathy, or whatever it was that sometimes let her communicate with other minds.

Though usually it happened while they were sleeping. Dream-walking, she called it. Well, being unconscious was kind of like sleeping.

Kyle was coming around—sort of. He kept drifting in and out sickly, and he was in a lot of pain and nausea. That was a bad sign, Max knew.

He knelt beside Isabel and put his hand lightly on Kyle's head.

"Max, you can't," Michael whispered urgently. "You'll leave a hand print..." The telltale silvery hand print that had first alerted Valenti to Liz.

Isabel chewed her knuckles, wide-eyed. She didn't know what to say to her brother. She didn't even like Kyle. Still...

"We can't just let him die," Max whispered back. But he didn't open his mind to the contact right away. Instead, he probed gently around the edges.

"He's got a concussion," he murmured, opening his eyes. "But I can't detect any major damage." He looked over at the strange dark-eyed girl who stared at him with a thoughtful look on her face.

He cleared his throat and got to his feet. "I think we should get him to the hospital as quickly as possible," he said in a normal voice. "Help me carry him, Michael."

They lifted and guided him up to their jeep. Isabel picked up Kyle's jacket as an afterthought and turned to follow the guys. She paused and studied Kyle's passenger more closely. She had not been with him at the meteor site. Isabel would swear to it.

The girl put her hand on Isabel's arm. "Please, I can't be found here. My folks will kill me. I'm not supposed to hitchhike." She smiled shyly. "You know how parents are."

Isabel smiled in response, feeling big sisterly all of a sudden. "Yeah, I've got a couple of my own."

They climbed the embankment and got into the back seat with the on-again, off-again Kyle between them.

"Sylvia, sweet Sylvia," he crooned off-key, with a beatific grin plastering his face. Then he groaned and looked sick.

"Hurry up, Max," Isabel hissed. "I don't want a ring-side seat to what's coming next."

Max pulled back onto the road and hit the speed limit and kept going. Just about the worse thing he could think of right now was getting pulled over by the sheriff with Kyle in this condition. It looked like he'd just had the crap beat out of him, and he and Michael had Kyle's blood all over them.

The only thing worse would be not getting him to the hospital in time.

Max didn't want to think of the consequences to all of them if that happened. Better to go down trying. Hand Print or no.

"Do I need to pull over? Isabel!"

"No," she said, uncertain. "I think he's going to make it, Max. Just drive."

Michael gripped the dash and the roll bar, dividing his attention between the front and back seat. "Just drive, Max," he added to Isabel's plea.

Sweet Sylvia—if that was her name—pulled Kyle's head down to her shoulder, murmuring softly into his ear. She patted his cheek, and he seemed to calm down some.

Max wove through town like a maniac, ignoring traffic signals at every turn. He had a screaming squad car escort for the last half a mile.

He pulled up to the ambulance entrance on two wheels. Michael dashed off to snag a doctor while the girls manhandled Kyle out of the back seat. Max sat put with his hands shaking on the wheel and waited for the deputy to descend on him.

He knew how it looked. He didn't want to give an overexcited deputy any excuse to roust him.

But it wasn't a deputy approaching his jeep; it was the sheriff.

* * *

Sheriff Valenti didn't spare a second glance for Max Evans. He scooped Kyle in his arms and carried him into the emergency room, where nurses and doctors took over his charge. He was left standing in the cold tile hall with his son's blood on his uniform and no explanation for it.

He turned to the Evans girl and Garin, also left standing in the hall. He took in their bloody clothes. Kyle's blood.

"Tell me what happened." he said in a cold voice that would brook no dissembling.

Isabel spoke first. "There was an accident," she said, hanging onto Garin for moral support—but for which of them?

"What kind of accident?" his eyes narrowed.

"Car accident," Garin said, breathing hard. "Out on the old Rock Road. The car's out there. See for yourself."

"I will." Then his tone shifted slightly. "You found Kyle's car? And you stopped."

"Of course," Isabel lifted her chin a fraction.

Valenti ducked his head. "Thank you for that." Suddenly that was all the policing he could stand, and he wandered off to wait for word on his son's condition.

* * *

Max, Isabel and Michael sat in the jeep and waited. A deputy had been dispatched to make sure they didn't go anywhere. They weren't exactly in custody—yet. There was still the matter of a whole book-load of traffic citations. Not to mention what Kyle might tell his father about their encounter in the desert shortly before the accident.

"I don't know why you let _that girl_ get away without corroborating our story," Michael was saying to Isabel again.

Max just steepled and unsteepled his fingers. For a fellow who devoted himself to keeping a low profile, he'd sure been doing a dismal job of it lately.

"I don't know." Isabel was getting testy. "She just seemed—vulnerable."

"Oh, and we're not?" Michael hissed back.

Max stiffened. Valenti was headed their way. He let his hands drop into his lap and told himself to breathe.

The sheriff took in his bloody clothes, then looked away and back. "Thank you—for bringing my son in," he said, licking dry lips. "The doctor's say he was touch and go there for awhile, but he'll make it. Under the circumstances," he hemmed, "There won't be any citations. Now go on home, all of you."

"Yessir," Max squeezed out through his constricted throat. He didn't need a second invitation.

"Sheriff?"

Valenti turned to his deputy and took the proffered radio mic. As Max drove away.

Valenti was saying, "You found the car? Yes, Kyle's all right—why?"

* * *

Silphi pulled Isabel's sweater about her body and settled into the corner of the bus seat against the window. Maybe it was going a bit far to get the girl to give Silphi her sweater, but she was bone cold.

That was too close for comfort. Roswell had a well-deserved reputation, she decided. The natives were all crazy. But something niggled at Silphi's back brain: she had a strange feeling that not all of them were natives.

Proscribed territory or not, she could almost swear that a couple of those kids were a little more than human. The odds of contacting a telepath _and_ a healer in one broadcast seemed too awesome to calculate.

Of course those were also latent human traits. One in twenty had the potential. Maybe Roswell inspired the natives to greater feats than the ordinary. But whatever it was, Silphi was going to be hard pressed to figure out how to put it in her field report.

Perhaps it might be best to leave the whole incident out entirely. After all, she was in for enough grief for coming within a hundred miles of Roswell, let alone interacting with its inhabitants.

No, this would be a good time to practice her editing skills.

Silphi closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep to the rhythm of the bus wheels. Her field assignment would be back on track by morning.

* * *

Kyle didn't want to open his eyes, but his father had been sitting at his bedside for five minutes already. He pried an eyelid, then the other. His head didn't fall off.

"Hi dad," he said. "I think I wrecked my car." A fender bender couldn't possibly hurt this much.

"It's all right, son," his dad said.

Now Kyle was really worried. Only bits and pieces had come back to him, but he did remember sailing through the air at one point. Shit. He'd just had the engine retuned.

Then he thought of something else, and his head didn't hurt so much anymore. He smiled. "Have you met her?"

His dad frowned. "Met who?"

"Sylvia, of course," Kyle smiled. "Isn't she a dream?"

His dad let his breath out slowly. "Dream is the right word, I'm afraid," he told his son. "There isn't anyone named Sylvia. Max Evans brought you in last night. There was only Isabel and Michael Garin with him."

A frown briefly creased the sheriff's brow, but he shook it off. "There was no one else with them."

Kyle turned his head to the wall. No Sylvia? Had he dreamt her? His eyes felt moist and he blinked them clear. It couldn't be true. It just couldn't be.

Valenti excused himself to let his son rest. He paused to pick up Kyle's soiled school jacket from the night stand. "I'll have this cleaned for you, son."

"Sure dad," Kyle said without looking up. "Whatever."

The sheriff closed the door behind him. Half way down the corridor he paused to examine his son's jacket. There was something he couldn't put his finger on—he sniffed it—he could almost swear he smelled flowers. But it was only mud and blood and road grease. Odd though.

He tossed it in the back of the patrol car and headed back to the station. He had some paperwork to finish up on the crash.

And another curiosity to add to the file on Max Evans.


End file.
